The Toxic Mind with Armand DiMele

Posted February 16 2015

In "The Toxic Mind", host of “The Positive Mind” radio show and founder of the DiMele Center for Psychotherapy, Armand DiMele, along with special guest Roberta Maria Atti, talks about the side effects of suppressing feelings like anger and frustration, and discuss ways to prevent the side effects from suppressing emotions and how to heal them. Following is an excerpt from this important program.

Hey listen -- here’s something for you to consider. Consider this: the continual suppression of emotions during fight or flight reactions results in atrophy, an endogenous toxicosis in noradrenic neurons. How do you like them apples? That’s what our program is going to be about today. Today we’re going to be talking about this and that sounds pretty technical, doesn’t it? Well, Roberta and I have uncovered The Biology of Mental Illness and Violence, and it’s really remarkable, by E. Van Winkle. And by the way, this work is available in 23 languages. It’s called “The Toxic Mind”. E. Van Winkle just woke up to write this article.

Let’s start with the theory, the idea here, the following hypothesis, right? The continued suppression of emotions means you feel something and you don’t let yourself manifest it. It comes up, you feel it, and it gets shut off for one reason or another. During fight or flight reactions, now that means when you’re excited, nervous, or tense, when your body is saying we have to do something and we’re going to get all ready for action. So that’s the fight or flight reactions, that if you don’t do something when your body says we’re ready to do something about the situation, it results in a toxic accumulation. Now that’s what we’re going to look at today.

This is a really interesting thing. How could that be? How does it work? Well, we know how it works because we see it all the time. Your leader at work is in a miserable mood and they bark at you, and you get upset but you can’t say anything about it. So it boils. Part of the suppression of emotions is actually what is the backbone of civilization. We as civilized humans, we suppress emotions in part because it’s necessary in order to function in a human society.

Written By Laura Simms, Award Winning Storyteller ‘A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.’ Albert Einstein Einstein’s Napkin On the...